My active account is @thayerw.

@thayer is inactive and no longer monitored; it remains only for the sake of post history.


  • 12 Posts
  • 253 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 19th, 2023

help-circle

  • Thanks for clarifying, and I can appreciate your overall concerns as I face the same dilemma with my aging relatives.

    Just to confirm, have you opened these files in Word yourself (or witnessed them being opened), to verify they are in fact valid documents? if valid, are they meant to be in English?

    It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen “other” files renamed with an incorrect file extension.


  • Assuming you meant “.docx files”, those should open without issue in LibreOffice. As others have said, OnlyOffice is another popular option if format preservation is a goal.

    What do you mean when you say the files are “not supported” by the tools you’ve tried? What, exactly, is happening and what are you trying to accomplish? The end goal wasn’t clear to me from your post.

    Getting Word to run under wine will require much more effort than copying the Word binary.







  • Sure, like I said above, GOS doesn’t at all prevent you from rooting the device. They only discourage it from a security point of view. Regarding MicroG, I’ve never had need for it myself but I’ve read many other posts over the years from users who have installed it on GOS in lieu of Graphene’s own implementation.

    I would argue that overall GrapheneOS provides more control over the OS than some other Android-based operating systems.




  • You’ve clearly done your homework, and you’ve gotten a lot of good feedback already, so I’ll just add a few points…

    • Storage options: Personally, I’d replace the existing drive with the highest capacity I could afford. In an ideal situation, I’d keep the host on another drive (NVMe or flash) and dedicate the large drive to a single partition of data storage.

      In my own mini-PC (8th gen NUC), I’ve got a smaller NVMe for Proxmox and a single 8TB internal SSD for data.

    • Encryption: If you’re going to bother with encryption, I wouldn’t half-ass it. Why bother at all if you’re fine using auto-decryption or a weak password that will be guessed with any sizeable effort? Just lock it down with a strong password and decrypt/mount the data drive after any reboot; making a shell alias or script for this is trivial. You’re likely not rebooting the server more than once a week anyway.

    • Budget/Specs: I get the sense you don’t have much budget right now, but knowing your hardware would help in suggesting solutions. Do you have an NVMe slot? What is the make/model of the motherboard and case?

    • Filesystem: For simple storage, this really doesn’t matter and Ext4 will probably be fine. It’s a mature, robust, no-frills filesystem which is perfect for bulk file storage (docs, music, videos, etc.), but Btrfs would be fine too if you want more options.

    • USB Docking Stations: I’ve had really good experiences with USB docking stations like this one, and I currently use it for attaching my backup HDDs each month. I wouldn’t want to rely on them for realtime data access, but they do work wonderfully for backups and one-off drive access.


  • thayer@lemmy.catoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldSome hardware talk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Amazon typically has a few vendors that specialize in refurbished Optiplexes and/or HP Elites in small or ultra small form factor sizes.

    A word of caution about these refurbs though…the memory and storage they include are often dollar store brands (Kingfast) that I wouldn’t even trust for a child’s PC. It’s worth purchasing your own after the fact.


  • thayer@lemmy.catoSelfhosted@lemmy.worldSome hardware talk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Your options will depend on many things…

    • How much storage is needed?
    • Is RAID important to you?
    • Is power usage a concern?
    • Noise level?

    I don’t know how demanding photoprism is, but you could probably do fine with a refurbished i5/i7 Dell Optiplex or similar, with one or more SSDs added to it. If money is really tight and storage needs are high, you could go with mechanical drives instead.

    The problem with enterprise servers is that are generally very loud and use a lot of power…not unlike adding a second refrigerator to your environment. In my opinion, they’re not worth it unless you have a specific use case (training for a career, etc.).




  • You’ll need to provide specifics if you want solutions to many of these issues.

    • What exactly isn’t working with your Yubikey?
    • Which bank apps? Did you check the compatibility list maintained by GOS?
    • Which apps aren’t working without Google Play?

    For the keyboard, there are several FOSS keyboards which support spacebar navigation, but you can also install Gboard and simply disallow any permissions, including network access.

    Regarding Signal, this would be a reality for anyone with a non-Apple device. You may need to find a compromise and simply use SMS, RCS, or even just email when dealing with certain people.

    There will always be one-off features available only on other devices or platforms. Only you can decide whether they are worth the cost of security and privacy.